Page 48 of Five Alarm Love
Today wasn’t about social media.
Lou appeared around a bend in the trail thirty seconds later, parked, and took off her helmet.Long, dark hair rippled down her back before she secured it in a low ponytail.
Tuli rubbed his thumb and index finger together, wanting to touch and see if her hair felt as silky as it looked.At her cautious expression, he rolled his hand into a fist and planted it at his side.Go slowly.First and foremost, they were friends, and he didn’t want to ruin that friendship.
Whatever he had done wrong, it had spooked her.Today was a sort-of date.Tuli wouldn’t push.Instead, he’d do what he did best—enthusiasm.
“Blackberry time!”he said, unhooking the nested buckets from the bungees on the back of his ATV and handing her one.
Lou’s small, guarded smile changed into an open, relaxed one.
Point for Tuli.
If the day seemed to get brighter, she didn’t appear to notice.Tuli sure as heck did.
“Let’s go!”He motioned toward the thick bushes lining either side of the ATV trail.“Yes!Looks like there are still blackberries here.Grandma Ruth will be thrilled.She wants to make compote and preserves.”
Lou dropped her thick leather jacket on the ATV.She had a blue-and-black-checked flannel shirt tucked into cargo pants.She looked up from where she studied the bush in front of her.“How long will the blackberries last?”
“With my appetite for her cooking?Not long.Actually, with my snacking ability, we’ll be lucky if most of this makes it down the hill.But Grandma can dream about them lasting until spring.”
Lou’s laugh, rare and unrestrained, felt like liquid sunshine pouring over him, illuminating the world and making him smile.For several minutes, they worked in companionable silence, the only sounds the rustles of leaves and branches and the dullthunksof berries hitting the bottoms of the buckets.
“What about you?Are you keeping the berries or are these for your family?”he asked.
“I wanted them for myself, but when I told Gordy I was picking today, he really lit up.”With a shrug, she said, “Guess these are his now.”
Tuli looked over at her guarded expression.“How’s he been doing?I know with his condition…”
Lou paused as several berries rolled out of her hand into the bucket.The soft impacts of fruit on plastic sounded wrong.Even the rustling of a ground squirrel in the underbrush was somehow too harsh.
He studied the stiff set of her shoulders and blinked.It wasn’t about Gordy.Something else was going on.There was more to her quietness and downturned mouth.He’d bet on it.Tuli resisted his usual need to fill the silence and waited.
Finally, she said, “Mom and Dad think that Gordy is slowing down.”
“What do you mean?”
“The syndrome he has… it’s progressive.”
Tuli blew out a low whistle.Maybe her worry really was about her brother.“Oh man, that’s rough.I didn’t realize that.I had thought he needed an adjustment on his medications and some rest, and then he’d be fine.”
“Nothing about Gordy’s health is simple.”
“I’ll say.”
Lou studied the blackberry bush in front of her.
A breeze teased strands of hair over her forehead, tempting Tuli to brush them to the side.
Her silence was his kryptonite.
He pressed his mouth shut, fighting against the discomfort.
They slowly worked their way up a game trail, the bushes growing closer together here.After another few seconds, she half turned toward him, her eyes bright.Was it the fall sunlight or were those tears?Tuli had never seen Lou cry, and the thought of it hit him like a punch to the gut.
She picked another berry, her fingertips now tinged purple.“Other patients who’ve had Bledsoe Syndrome generally don’t live past age thirty.”
Tuli did some terrible math.“Isn’t he four years older than you?Thirty?”
